Economy
A lack of investment in the Dales farms has led to problems related to more intensive farming methods. The loss of unproductive farms has led to land being merged with adjoining or nearby businesses, and an increase in second home ownership by people from outside the area. There are fewer people looking after the land with labour-intensive jobs such as sheepherding, rebuilding walls and barns, maintaining woodland no longer taking place. The increase in sheep-ranching has gone hand in hand with reduction in the number of cattle.
Lead mining was once the main industry in Wharfedale. From the seventeenth century to the late nineteenth it employed hundreds of men and boys, exploiting the veins in the limestone at Greenhow, Hebden, Grassington, Linton and Conistone, Appletreewick and elsewhere. The heaps of mining waste remain, contaminated with lead, and on which little will grow. The few plants that will are known as 'lead plants' such as spring sandwort and alpine penny-cress.
Tourism is big part of the rural economy in Wharfedale and there are many short, mid and long distance walks, with clear waymarkers. There are also other outdoor activities such as rock climbing, most notably at Kilnsey Crag, and canoeing. Other activities include cycling, mountain biking, horse riding and caving. The following Long Distance Walks pass near or over the river:
- Dales Way (follows the river valley from Beckermonds to Ilkley)
- Lady Anne's Way (enters the river valley near Hubberholme and leaves to the west of Bolton Abbey)
- Inn Way to the Yorkshire Dales (part of walk from Grassington to Buckden)
- The Way of the Roses (part of the cycle route from Appletreewick to Thorpe)
Read more about this topic: River Wharfe
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)